Effective Genres and Sub-genres for your Library (part 1)
Genre and Sub-genre are the most important fields when organizing your library. Using standard Genres are very important and should be created based on the styles of music you represent. There are different guidelines behind populating these fields. The most common is to populate a one genre tag and up to 4 sub-genre tags.
When creating your library’s taxonomy or schema, it is important to represent standard music genres as well as production music genres. Many libraries handle this process differently based on the music they represent. Everybody does it differently, so it is important to know which genres are standard and which are customizable.
Standard Genres
These are the most common CHR-Top 40 style genres, and a main reference for most music libraries.
- Blues
- Country
- Rock
- Pop
- Folk
- Electronic (Ambient)
- Electronic (Dance)
- Urban
- R&B
- Jazz
- World
- Classical
- Dance
- Folk
- Reggae
- Latin
- Disco
Production Music Genres
These genres a loosely structured and many libraries set these up, based on the music they represent.
- Film &TV, TV/Film, or TV, Film
- Soundtrack
- Filmscore
- Production
- Score
- Trailer
- Sound Design
- Sound Effects or SFX
- Holiday
- Patriotic
- Sports
- Children
- Kids/Quirky
- Corporate
- Cinematic
- Orchestral
- News
- Drama
- Retail
There are many strategies involved when choosing the most effective genre tags for your library. An assessment of your tracks based on style, artists, and albums will help you evaluate what percentages of genres you represent and which genres should be structured to suit your library.
Organize genres based on hierarchical reasoning (generalization to specific).
Ex 1
Genre: Pop
Sub-genre: Synth Pop
Ex 2
Genre: TV/FILM
Sub-genre: Drama
If your library is composed of a high percentage of production music, specifically geared for Cinematic tracks and Trailers, an approach would be to select many sub-genres that describe the types of cinematic and trailer tracks.
Ex 1
Genre: Cinematic
Sub-genres: Action, Adventure, Horror
Ex 2
Genre: Trailer
Sub-genres: Orchestral, Orchestral Hybrid, Emotional, Tension
TagTeam’s taxonomy offers a more general approach to production music and provides the most effective descriptive tags in the “Styles” or “Music For” category (also known as the “Keywords” field).
Below is an example of how a Cinematic track would be categorized:
Genre: TV, Film
Sub-genre: Cinematic
Style: Action, Adventure, Horror
